Planning key for library survival

“May you live in interesting times” — a Chinese curse or a Western invention? While its origin is disputed, its meaning is quite applicable to our current state of affairs. Nowhere is this truer than for the Santa Cruz Public Libraries.
There are those who feel libraries are no longer relevant. Last week, an acquaintance made the comment that libraries were becoming obsolete and that e-books will make libraries unnecessary. I asked if she wanted to purchase all the books she was downloading to a Kindle, and she said certainly not. I explained that libraries are still doing what they have always done — helping people get books and information, no matter the format.
I suggest you ask the 10,815 people who visited the Scotts Valley library or the 342,600 people who accessed the library’s Web site last year what they were doing if libraries are obsolete.
The Santa Cruz library system was hit very hard by the current recession. Sales tax revenues are down 5 percent from last year and 21 percent from fall 2007. Next year, we anticipate a decrease in revenue from property taxes. Those two sources account for 96 percent of our revenue. Personnel and materials are our largest expenditures.
We will recover from the recession, but we do not expect a return to the way things were. I believe there is a new baseline being set, and we are all going to have to learn to live with a new “normal.” If we have learned nothing else from the events of the recent past, we have learned that we need to be better prepared for what the future holds, and this means we need to do a better job of planning.
To this end, in September of this year, we embarked on a three-to-five-year strategic plan for the library system. A committee was formed, including members of the Joint Powers Board, staff and citizens. We are in the data-gathering phase and by February will start the process of crafting a plan for formal adoption in May.
We are trying to get input from as many residents as possible and have developed several mechanisms for doing so. We are hosting focus groups. There is a blog and an option to submit comments on our Web site, www.santacruzpl.org/future/. In January, we will conduct a survey that will be available at various locations as well as online. Most important have been the face-to-face meetings with residents at town halls that were at or near each branch library this fall, except for in Scotts Valley.
Since the architects needed to hear from the community specifically about the exciting new library building in Scotts Valley, we postponed the town hall meeting for the strategic plan until Thursday, Jan. 7, in the Scotts Valley Community Center. I will be there for half an hour before the meeting to informally greet members of the community.
The architects’ meeting focused on what the community wanted in the design of the new building. The Strategic Plan Town Hall is intended to focus more on the future of the library system in general: What should our service priorities be? What will the system look like in the year 2020? What can we do in the next few years to move us toward that desired future?
Whether you went to the October meeting or not, please join us for a very different meeting. In addition, we should have time to talk about how we can tie in the desired service priorities to the design of the new building.
– Teresa Landers is director of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries system.